Terms and Conditions of Use of Digitised Theses from Trinity College Library Dublin Copyright statement
All material supplied by Trinity College Library is protected by copyright (under the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 as amended) and other relevant Intellectual Property Rights. By accessing and using a Digitised Thesis from Trinity College Library you acknowledge that all Intellectual Property Rights in any Works supplied are the sole and exclusive property of the copyright and/or other IPR holder. Specific copyright holders may not be explicitly identified. Use of materials from other sources within a thesis should not be construed as a claim over them.
A non-exclusive, non-transferable licence is hereby granted to those using or reproducing, in whole or in part, the material for valid purposes, providing the copyright owners are acknowledged using the normal conventions. Where specific permission to use material is required, this is identified and such permission must be sought from the copyright holder or agency cited.
Liability statement
By using a Digitised Thesis, I accept that Trinity College Dublin bears no legal responsibility for the accuracy, legality or comprehensiveness of materials contained within the thesis, and that Trinity College Dublin accepts no liability for indirect, consequential, or incidental, damages or losses arising from use of the thesis for whatever reason. Information located in a thesis may be subject to specific use constraints, details of which may not be explicitly described. It is the responsibility of potential and actual users to be aware of such constraints and to abide by them. By making use of material from a digitised thesis, you accept these copyright and disclaimer provisions. Where it is brought to the attention of Trinity College Library that there may be a breach of copyright or other restraint, it is the policy to withdraw or take down access to a thesis while the issue is being resolved.
Access Agreement
By using a Digitised Thesis from Trinity College Library you are bound by the following Terms & Conditions. Please read them carefully.
TRINITY COLLEGE, COLLEGE STREET,
DUBLIN 2, IRELAND
1690 - 1703
BY J. G. Simms, M. A.
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor
in Philosophy of the University of Dublin
Preface
The object of this thesis is to establish the facts
of the Williamite forfeitures and, in particular, to
resolve the statistical uncertainties to which Butler
drew attention in his Confiscation in Irish history.
The forfeitures have hitherto received very cursory
treatment from historians, who have for the most part
limited their accounts to a summary of somewhat
puzzling statistics. The thesis attempts to fill out
the narrative and to describe the fortunes of various
Jacobite families as they were affected by outlawry,
the articles of Limerick, pardon or otherwise.
Sources which have not previously been used
in-clude the accompaniments to the report of the inquiry
commission of 1699 (T.C.D., MS N. 1. 3) and the
Annes-ley manuscripts, of which microfilms are in the National
Library of Ireland. The books of Survey and Distribution
and other records of the Quit Rent Office, which are
now in the Public Record Office of Ireland, have also
been of great value. I have pleasure in acknowledging
the ready assistance which I have received from the
staffs of the Public Record Office and the various
libraries which I have used. I am particularly
in-debted to Dr R. C. Simington, who has at all times
been ready to make available his unrivalled knowledge
of the Qait Rent Office documents.
for a degree at any other university. It is entirely
my own work and I have not received any assistance
in writing it, apart from the suggestions and
com-ments of my supervisor, Professor T. W. Moody, to
Ab br ev iat ions
The abbreviations used in the footnotes are for
the most part taken from the list in Irish Historical
Studies, iv. 6-33. The following additional
abbrevia-tions have been used (fuller particulars of the works
referred to are given in the bibliography):
Annesley ~SS Manuscripts of the Annesley collection,
Castlewellan (microfilms in N.L.I.).
Refer-ences relate to the volumes listed in the
descriptive catalogue (Anal. Hib. xvi.
359-64).
Clarke corr. Correspondence of George Clarke
(T.C.D., ~SS K. 5. 1-13). References
relate to volume and letter numbers.
Commissioners’ report The report Of the commissioners
e
appointed by parliament to inquire into
the Irish forfeitures.
Correspondentie Correspondentie van Willem III en
van Hans Willem Bentinck, iii.
H .L.MSS, n.s.
Story, History
Story, Continuation
House of lords manuscripts, new series.
Story, A true and impartial history.
Story, A continuation of the
impart-ial history of the wars of Ireland.
Dates are given in the old style, except that the year
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Introductory i
The war and the land, 1689-91 25
0utlawr i e s 59
The articles of Limerick and Galway, 1691 89
Pardons and reversals 142
Royal grants 160
The inquiry commission of 1699 189
The Act of Resumption, 1700 224
The trustees’ proceedings 244
The hearing of claims 280
The selling of the forfeited estates,
1702-3 308
Conclus ion 333
Critical notes on the bibliography 346
Bibliography 372
Summary of trustees’ sales, 1702-3 389
Abstract of the Williamite
settle-ment 418
Maps showing the proportion of land
held by catholics in 1641, 1688 and
CHAPTER I
Introductory
The Williamlte forfeitures were the last of the series
of confiscations which in the course of a century’and a
half changed the ownership of the greater part of Ireland.
Their history covers the thirteen years between the battle
of the Boyne and the final disposal of the forfeited
est-ates. It consists of a complex of forfeitures and
restor-ations, grants and resumptions. In the course of these
proceedings most of the catholics who still owned land
ran the gauntlet in some form or other. Some succeeded in
recovering or preserving their estates, whether under the
articles of Limerick or otherwise. Some lost their lands
irrevocably. After 1703 the~ were no more confiscations
on the wholeszale scale of the sixteenth ant seventeenth
centuries. Stability had at last been reached,
stage was set for the period of the penal laws
and the
and the
supremacy of the ’protestant nation’.
In the history of these confiscations 1641 makes a
natural dividing line. ~efore 1641 they were directed
against those who adhered to the old Gaelic c iv il is at ion ;
after that date religion formed the primary llne of
cleav-age. The earlier confiscations, from the seizure of Leix
reduction of more or less independent territories, and
their settlement with English or Scottish grantees. The
lesser expropriations carried out by James I in Leitrim,
Longford, Wexford and elsewhere were not technically
for-feitures, lhey were based, not on any charge of rebellion,
but on the legalistic revival of old crown titles. They
resulted in a number of landowners being deprived of a
great part of their property. In these confiscations
almost all the victims were the ~aelic Irish. The old
English (with some exceptions, notably the Desmonds who
had ’gone Irish’) continued to hold their lands. In spite
of religious differences they allied themselves with the
protestant government of England rather than with the
catholic chieftains of ~reland.
From 1641 the situation changed. Parliamentarians
made no distinction between Normans of the pale and Gaels
of the south and west. F ingall and Gormanston, no less
than maccarthy and u’~empsey, were ~rish papists. ±he
same mescription served for catholic descendants of
Ellz-abethan settlers, ~agenals, ~rownes or Colcloughs. The
Cromwelllan settlement was frankly on a religious basis.
~ii catholics, except the very l ew WhO provea ~neir z
con-stant good affection’, forfeited their lands. Although
Ormond and a limited number of other protestants also
forfeited, the general rule was that ’protestant land’
From 1641 to 1703 two wars and three settlements
formed different phases of one continuous process, the
s~ruggle between catholic and protestant for the land
of Ireland. Of the three settlements the Cromwellian
was the most drastic and the least complicated. It has 1
been described in some detail b~ Prendergast. It involved
the expropriation of virtually all the catholic
land-owners east an~ soutn oi the Shannon, and the division
of most of Connacht and Clare between the transplanted
catholics and the original proprietors. The Restoration
and Williamite settlements were considerably more
com-plicated. They involved the resolution of conflicting
interests and the individual decision of a great number
of claims. Neither settlement has been the subject of a
full-scale independent study. ~ery diverse views have
been expressed about the general results of both
settle-ments and the subject has remained one of the vexed
questions of Irish history.
II
All accounts of these settlements have suffered from
the want of a firm statistical basis. Estimates of the
area held by catholics and protestants in 1641 and 1688
have varied so widely that it has been impossible to
assess with any degree of certainty the combined effect
of the ~romwellian and ~estoration settlements, or to
unaerstan~ ~ne s~reng~n an~ a~i~ae o~ ~e rival groups
during the different phases of tlne struggle. ~n assessment
or ~ne 1688 position is ~i es~en~a± pai’~ of the
back-ground against which the extent and effect of the ~Till
iam-ite forfeitures must be judged¯
Those writers who have treated of the period have
not failed to realise the importance of statistics. We
have been supplied with an abundance of figures relating
to c1e o~Jn~:cshio of land at the various critical dates
~he trouble has been that no twJo sets of figures agree
ana ~na~ there has be@n no objective standard by which
to Judge between different estimates. The problem has
been discussed in considerable detail by ~utler. his
conclusion is that ’in certain cases, notably as to the
extent of the confiscations under uromwell and William of
Orange, and as to the exact state of landed property in
Ireland after the Acts of ~ettlement and Explanation, 2
there is still a field open to research’.
The first attempt to analyse the territorial
statist-ics of the 0romwellian and Restoration settlements was
made by ~etty. In his Political anatomy of ireland,
written in 1672, he calculated that in 1641 catholics
held about two-thirds of the profitable land (which he
estimated at seven and a half million Irish acres), and
that as a result of the l~estoration settlement they held 3
rather less than one-third. ~ater on, in his ’iTeatise of
Ireland, he observed that in 1683 Irish catholics had 4
about half the area which they had held in 1641.
Petty’s estimate for 1641 was challenged in an
elab-orate paper read to the Royal Irish Academy in 1862 by
W. ~. ~ardinge. ilardinge estimated that eleven-twentieths
of Ireland was forfeited in the course of the Gromwellian
settlement, ’a proportion much less than what has
histor-ically and otherwise been reputed as the result of the 5
unhappy disturbances of 1641’. har~in~e’s estimate of the
forfeii~e~l land was based, somewhat erratically, on the
~own survey, his figure for unforfeited land was obtained
by deducting the forfeited area from the total as given
by the Ordnance survey. ~e made no allowance for ~etty’s
under-measurement and thus assigned too small a proportion
to the forfeited land. On the basis of the Down survey
measurements the forfeited land would on ~ardinge’s
fig-ures (which include church lands) work out at rather more
than sixty per cent of the total.
There is a wide variety of estimates for the proportion
of land held by catholics under the Restoration settlement.
3. Fetty, Economic writings, i.135-7. 4. lbid., ii. 598.
Petty made an elaborate calculation of the areas
ass-igned to ’innocent papists’’letterees and nominees’,
and other categories in arriving at his estimate that
little less than one-third of the total profitable 6
land had been recovered by catholics. The author of the
State of the papist and protestant proprieties by
sim-ilar calculations gave catholics between a third and a 7
fourth of the profitable area. Richard Cox put the 8
catholic share at a fourth of the whole, and Richard 9
Lawrence put it at about a fifth. Butler discussed
the problem in considerable detail and suggested, with
some hesitation, that ’at the accession of James II only
at the outside one-seventh or mu one-eighth of the
total area of the island remained in the possession of l0
catholics ’.
Butler’s thesis raises points which are fundamental
for a study of the Williamite forfeitures. Without
know-ing the situation in 1688 it is impossible to assess
the relative impact of the forfeitures or the extent
of catholic ownership of land at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. But, apart from these considerations,
Butler’s argument is of particular relevance because it
6. Petty, Economic writings, i. 135-7. 7. Published 1689.
8. Aphorisms relating to the kingdom of 9. Lawrence, Interest of Ireland, 1682. i0. Butler, confiscatlon, p. 202.
is almost
mission of inquiry into the ~Villiamite forfeitures
entirely founded on the report which the
com-
pre-sented in 1699.
The report, on which all accounts of the ~illiamite
forfeitures are based, contains a series of statistics givlx
ing the number of persons outlawed and excepted from
out-lawry, and the area of land forfeited and restored. As it
will frequently be necessary to refer to one or other of
these sets of figures, it
at this stage:
A. Individuals
Outlawed (a) in England 57
(b) in Ireland 3.921
Adjudged within articles of
Limerick or Galway
~ardoned by royal favour
~. Area (expressed in terms of profitable
Forfeited and not restored
Forfeited and restored
-(a) by articles
(b) by royal favour
Total forfeited area
is convenient to summarise them
3,978
i, 283
65
Irish acres )
752,953
233,106
74,733
1,060,792 ii
Butler’s argument is that as all the catholics sided
with James the estates of all were forfeited, except for
minors and persons who submitted in time or were acquitted 12
by partial juries. The total forfeited area of 1,060, 792
acres represents on Petty’s basis one-seventh of the
pro-fitable land. Butler’s estimate of one-seventh as the
maximum catholic share would thus leave no margin for the
estates of m~nors and others who avoided forfeiture. It
is evident that Butler was not altogether satisfied with
his argument and there is considerable variation in the 13 estimates which he makes in the course of his analysis.
His final conclusion, after allowing a margin for
unfor-feited land, presupposes a figure of some 1,200,000
pro-fitable Irish acres as the total catholic holding in 1688.
This on Petty’s basis would be rather less than one-sixth 14
of the profitable area.
Butler, in common with other writers on the subject,
confined his attention to the published report of the
inquiry commission. That report provided a su~Lmary, in
several respects misleading, of the full record presented
by the commissioners to the English parliament. The full
record was contained in nine books. The report itself was
presented as the tenth book and was designed to serve as
an index to the other nine, in addition to giving a
gen-eral account of the proceedings of the commission. Two
12. Butler, Confiscation. p. 202
13. Ibid., p~30. See also notes on pp. 220-1. 14. Ibld., p. 232. Butler’s figures are discussed in my article ’land owned by catholics in Ireland in 1688’
sets of the nine books have survived. One is the house
of lords copy, of which parts have been published together 15
with an abstract of the remainder. The other, which is
in Trinity College, Dublin, is believed to have been the
set given to William Lowndes, then secretary of the treas-16
ury. The first of the nine books contains the names of
those outlawed, the second gives particulars of the
for-feited estates with the names of their owners and the
areas confiscated or restored, the third and fourth give
the names of those adjudged within the articles of
Lim-erick or Galway, the fifth is the ’book of pardons and
reversals’. The remaining books deal with grants,
encumbr-ances, debts and James’s’private estate’.
The nine books are an invaluable source for the
Will-iamite forfeitures, and it is surprising that no historian
has hitherto made use of them. The individual books will
later be the subject of separate discussion in some
de-tail. At this stage it is sufficient to say that the full
record corrects in a number of important
standard account of the forfeitures,
the figures in the published report.
It has hitherto been generally assumed that the
3,978 persons outlawed were all landowners, who between
them owned the 1,060,792 acres forfeited; that the 1,283 part iculars the
which is based on
persons admitted to the articles between them owned
233,106 acres; and thet the sixty-five persons pardoned
owned 74,733 acres. The full record shows that the total
area forfeited ( including that subsequently restored)
comprised the estates of only 457 persons; that the area
restored under the articles consisted of 161 estates; and
that twenty-four estates were restored by royal favour.
~he great majority of those outlawed were not landowners.
Most of those admitted to the articles were never outlawed.
Their estates, which covered a great part of Connacht,
were therefore not included in the return of land forfeited
and restored. Several of those pardoned had no landed
property; the estates of others had not been seized and
were therefore not included in the return. Reference will
be made in later chapters to a number of notable estates
omitted from the record.
It is clear that a substantial part of the land owned
by catholics in 1688 was not included in the figures
given by the inquiry commissioners. Butler’s whole analysis
was based on the assumption that the commissioners’
re-port covered almost all the land in catholic ownership.
In the light of the particulars recorded in the nine
books that assumption is not sustainable, and it is
nec-essary to find some other basis on which to estimate the
III
Fortunately such a basis is available in the Quit
Rent Office set of the books of Survey and Distribution.
The set, which has been described in detail by Dr R. C.
S imlngton in his introduction to the volume ~or county
Roscommon, covers, townland by townland and parish by
parish, all the land forfeited by Cromwell together with
much of the adjacent unforfeited land measured along with
it. The left-hand pages show the proprietors of 1641 with
the names and areas of the lands which they held. The
right-hand pages show the names of those to whom the lands
were assigned at the Restoration settlement. Decrees of
the Court of Grace (1684-8) are entered at the side of
the Restoration assignments. Sales by the trustees for the
Willlamite forfeitures are entered in the extreme
right-hand columns. Thus, as Dr Simington has pointed out, the
proprietorship of Irish land at three different dates 17
can be seen on a single llne. Various sets of the books
of Survey and Distribution were used as the official
land records from Charles ll’s reign onwards. The
statist-ics compiled by the inquiry com~ission of 1699 are
di-rectly taken from them. A set of the books is included
in the Annesley manuscripts and is evidently the set
17. Books of Survey and Distribution, i., p .2O.
used by Francis Annesley, who was both a member of the
inquiry commission and a trustee for the sale of the 18
forfeited estates.
The saying that the basis of political history is
the relation of groups of men to plots of ground applies
with particular force to seventeenth-century Ireland.
The Survey and Distribution books, with their detailed
and comprehensive record of that relation, illuminate
more clearly than any generallsed description the
com-plexities of the Restoration settlement. Turning their
pages we get an immediate presentation of how the
settle-ment actually worked, and of how unequally it affected
different types of catholic families.
Thus in the ~eath book the left-hand pages show the
old ~orman families in possession of four-fifths of the
county in 1641. The Restoration assignments on the
right-hand pages show that less than half these lands were
re-covered. Fingall was restored in full, and ~ormanston
recovered everything except for a few lands assigned to
Petty. Less prominent families, such as Baths and Cusacks,
lost the greater part of their former holdings. Some names,
such as Delafield, Missett and Sherlock dropped out
al-together.
In areas where the Gaelic Irish were strongest in 1641
the proportion recovered at the Restoration was
consider-ably smaller. Thus in Tipperary the 0’Dwyers and 0’Glissanes
lost all their 1641 possessions ; in their place such
columns. In contrast,
Purefoy appear in the Restoration
Butlers, Everards and Purcells recovered a great part of their former holdings. The
Sligo book tells the same story; Taafe was restored;
0’Gara and 0’Connor Sligo lost everything.
In general, the books show that the old English of
the pale recovered almost half their former holdings,
while with the conspicuous exception of Clancarty the
Gaelic Irish of Leinster and Munster were to a great
extent eliminated. Considerable parts of Connacht and
Clare continued to be catholic strongholds.
Complete accuracy cannot be claimed for the measurements
recorded in the books. These were taken from the Down
survey for most of Ireland and from the Strafford survey
for Clare, Galway, Roscommon and Mayo. The general
tend-ency of these surveys was to underestimate the area.
Petty believed that Ireland contained about eighteen 19
million statute acres. The Ordnance survey figure is
more than twenty million. With considerable fluctuations
in the accuracy of the measurement of individual lands
this deficiency of rather more than ten per cent governs
the figures for all the counties, whether measured by the
Down or the Strafford survey.
Another feature of the books is the division of land
into profitable and unprofitable, which was made on a
very arbitrary basis. In the area covered by the Down
survey a comparatively small fraction of the land was
classed as unprofitable, chiefly bog. In the Strafford
survey a common practice was to decide that poor
mount-ain land should be regarded as half or quarter
profit-able; the rest was shown as unprofitable.
In spite of these deficiencies the books of Survey
and Distribution provide a remarkably complete record
of the ownership of Irish land. The inaccuracies are no
greater than we should expect from the primitive nature 20
of the instruments employed. There is no reason to
sup-pose that they affect the relative proportion of lands
held respectively by catholics and protestants.
By compiling lists of the areas assigned to each of
the old families reinstated under the Restoration
settle-ment or the later Commission of Grace, it is possible to
make an estimate of the total area restored to catholics.
The sorting out of owners into catholic and protestant
is facilitated by the numerous references to religious
denomination which the books of Survey and Distribution
contain. There is also ample material in the records of
the period for checking the religious affiliations of
individual families. With very few (and clearly
design-ated ) exceptions, those who forfeited after 1641 and,
still more so, those who followed James in 1688 were
l
20. Goblet, La transformation de la geographie politique
catholics. Between 1641 and 1688 there were some
de-fections from the catholic ranks, such as Wesley of
Dangan and Fitzpatrick of Castletown. They were, however,
and were more than offset by catholic comparatively few,
purchases of land.
The Survey and Distribution books show the
assign-ments made under the Restoration settlemmmt. They do not
show the purchases which catholics made on a considerable
scale in the latter part of Charles ll’s reign and under
James II. Particulars of a number of these purchases are
available in the records of the Williamlte forfeitures.
The most notable of the estates thus acquired was that
of Sir Patrick Trant, who among other purchases bought
the large Clanmaliere estates in Leix and 0ffaly from
Arlington, to whom they were granted at the Restoration.
Tyrconnell also acquired the greater part of his estate
by purchase.
Analysis of the Survey and Distribution books, read
with the records of the Williamite forfeitures, shows
that in 1688 catholics owned between a fourth and a
fifth of the country. The number of catholic owners was
rather more than thirteen hundred. Their holding of
pro-fitable land, some 1,700,000 Irish acres, works out at 21
forty per cent above Butler’s estimate.
IV
The position created by the Restoration settlement
was unstable and satisfied none of the parties. Catholics,
encouraged by the Breda declaration to hope for full
re-instatement, were sorely disappointed with the share
assigned to them. 0rmond’s policy of favouring the old
English at the expense of the Gaelic Irish perpetuated
the differences which had split the ranks of the Kilkenny
confederacy. Even among the old English many failed altog~
ether to recover their possessions; others were only
part-ially reinstated. Many of those who succeeded in
establish-ing claims experienced great difficulty in gettestablish-ing actual
possession of the lands assigned to them. Petty’s
con-tentions with McGillicuddy and Fitzgerald of Ticroghan
are typical of numerous disputes which arose between
Crom-wellian settlers and returning catholics. The unequal
operation of the settlement was to have much influence on
the proceedings of the patriot parliament of 1689 and on
the attitudes of rival Jacobite parties after the Boyne.
Protestant opinion was no less dissatisfied with the
Restoration settlement. Cromwellians showed a natural
re-sentment at having to surrender portions of their holdings
to former proprietors whom they continued to regard as
conquered rebels. The protestant attitude is summarised
in a contemporary pamphlet: ’--- the victors not being
permitted to enjoy what they had Justly won by the sword,
forfeited by their cruel disloyalty, by which partial
piece of justice the victors were indeed subdued and 22
the conquered were in the conclusion victors’.
Petty, who was absolved from surrendering any part
of his possessions, took a rather different view, and
deprecated the desire of ’some furious spirits’ that
the Irish should rebel again that they might be put to
the sword. He thought that the English had played for
heavy stakes and had won a gamester’s right to their 23
estates. With the accession of James, Petty’s chief
concern was for the preservation of the settlement.
Petty’s writings provide an illuminating commentary
on the development of the situation up to the eve of the
Revolution. His Political anatomy, in addition to its
summary of settlement statistics, gives some account of
the state of public opinion in the Ireland of 1672, with
its people ’all in factions and parties, English and
Irish, protestants and papists’. Petty remarked that
’the differences between the old Irish and old English
papists is (sic) asleep now because thay have a common
enemy’. He himself thought that the real distinction was
between those’vested and divested’ of the lands which
catholics had owned in 1641. ne observed, however, that
’the Irish vested by restoration seem rather to take 24
part with the divested’. Those Irish who had been
re-stored to their estates ’almost by miracle’ would, he
thought, be careful in future not to ’engage any more 25
upon a frivolous, impious undertaking’.
From the beginning of ~ames’s reign the maintenance
of the settlement became a recurring theme in the
cor-respondence of Petty and his friend and kinsman, Sir
Robert Sou~ell. By August 1685 Petty found his ~erry
troubles eclipsed by concern for the whole Irish
settle-ment. Southwell anxiously inquired whether Petty had any
particular reasons to believe the settlement in danger,
and asked ~hether he could ’discover any new marks that
the government is fond of a new scramble or to be
pest-ered with some years’ tinkering to frame a new
settle-ment and put all trade, 26
meantime to a stand’. In the correspondence the
improvement and exchange in the
settle-ment is constantly referred to as ’the ship’, and there
is much discussion of waves and storms and of the need 27
for dry-docking and caulking.
Agitation against the settlement was stimulated by
the reissue, in 1685, of bishop i~icholas French’s
Narrative of the sale and settlement of ireland. ~he
correspondence contains several references to this book
24. Petty, Economic writings, i. 167. 25. Ibld., i. 170.
to which Southwell urged ~etty to write a reply, as he 28
eventually did. in the summer of 1686 Petty had an
interview with Tyrconnell, which he thus described in
a letter to Southwell: ’~e pressed me to speak of the
settlement, i told him there were things in it against
the light of nature and the current equity of the world, 29
but whether it was worth the breaking i doubted’. h
Sout~well took comfort from the fact that ’the great man’
had been heard to say that ’his own fortune was settled
by the acts and that his majesty has no thought of part-3O
ing with a foot of his estate in that country’. Petty
next went to Windsor, where he had ’private and ample
conference’ with the king, who told him ’expressly and 31 voluntarily’ that he would not break the settlement.
A leading part in the agitation against the
settle-ment was taken by Richard ~agle, writer of the ’Coventry
letter’. ~etty, however, did not give up hope and
con-tinued his efforts to influence Tyrconnell. in ~#larch
1687 he wrote to ~outhwell: ’ I have given many notes
to Thorn Sheridan at my lord Tyrconnell’s importunity,
who pretends to write the history of Ireland. To what a good
pass had I brought matters to with that great man till
28. Petty-Southwell correspondence, pp. 149, 155-7, 273. 29. Ibid., p. 215.
30. Ibid., p. 213.
Dick ~agle came over’. Southwell in acknowledging a
copy of the coventry letter varied the usual metaphor
with the observation that the settlement ’llke Saint 33
Sebastian is stuck full of arrows’.
Petty’s last work was the Treatise of Ireland,
pre-sented to James in September 1687. The treatise refers
to protestant apprehensions, reflected in a drastic
fall in land values and in the beginnings of a migration
to England. Petty estimated that between 1683 and 1687
rents had fallen from three shillings and sixpence to
two shillings and sixpence an acre, and sale prices from
fourteen to ten years’ purchase. The direct cause of this
decline was, he believed, the fear that the settlement
would be reversed. Petty himself considered that the
apprehension of the protestants was excessive and that
it was possible to find a satisfactory solution of the
problem. ’--- my own fears concerning the settlement
are, and ever were, that the same was not better grounded 34
upon the accounts’. His somewhat naive proposal was to
set up a court consisting of ’five of
substantial, upright and experienced
the most ancient,
catholic gentlemen
of Ireland’ to answer such knotty questions as ’what
persons adjudged innocent by the Court of Claims Anno
1663 were more nocent than those which the said court did
32. Petty-Southwell correspondence, p. 33. Ibid., p. 264.
34. Petty, Economic writings, ii. 597.
judge to be nocent’. Those catholics who had been
re-instated were to be treated in the same way as the
ad-venturers and to surrender a third of their holdings to
meet the claims of those still unsatisfied and to
com-pensate any protestants who might be ejected from the 35
lands assigned to them. Petty also referred to the
apprehension of protestants that ’by partialities in
judicature they are like to lose their estates without
reprisals’. This apprehension also was, he considered,
exaggerated. Only five ejectment suits had been brought
in 1687, ’whereas five hundred have been talked of and 36
which probably will amount to thirty’. Petty’s
pro-posals, and in particular his transplantation scheme,
were curiously remote from the realities of the situation,
but the treatise is of value as giving an account of the
position in Ireland before the English revolution brought
about an open breach between catholic and protestant.
From the entries in the books of Survey and
Distribu-tion the relative strength of the rival groups of landed
proprietors, catholic and protestant, may be summarised
as follows :
Protestants held almost the whole of Ulster and
four-fifths of Leinster and ~unster (excluding Clare). They
also held the whole of Leitrim and nearly all Sligo.
Catholics held nearly half the land beyond the ~hannon.
35. Petty, Economic writings, 36. Ibid., il. 602.
In the rest of ireland, although the total area which
they held was small, catholic proprietors included a
number of magnates who exerted great local influence
and, after ~ames’s accession, were the cause of
con-siderable apprehension to protestants. The greatest of
these was Lord Clancarty, who owned nearly the whole
barony of ~uskerry. Lord Antrim represented a catholic
stronghold in Ulster. Lords Slane, ~almoy, l~ountgarret
and others had considerable estates in Leinster. Sir
Valentine ~rowne, whom James later created Lord Kenmare,
had a large part of Kerry.
Although the catholics were decidedly the weaker side,
they were gaining in strength, partly by the gradual
re-covery of lost land, partly by nww purchases. Except in
the north, they had a strong enough nucleus of great
land-owners to enable them to take advantage of the political
situation created by the accession of James. At the same
time, there were a large number of expropriated persons
pressing impatiently for the complete reversal of the
settlement. They are referred to in a contemporary account
as ’the old proprietors who evermore haunt and live about
those lands whereof they were dispossessed, and cannnt 37 forbear to hope and reckon a day of repossession’.
v
The course of the Williamite forfeitures was
che~u-ered and confused. There were several changes of policy,
and much of what was done was later undone. In particular
the situation was complicated by the restoration, under
articles or pardons, of forfeited land and by the
parl-iamentary resumption of ~Villiam’s grants. The story
falls into three main sections.
Firstly, there is the period of the war of 1689-91,
during which forfeiture policy played an important part
in the strategy of both sides, it was of particular
significance in the negotiations which went on almost
continuously during the last year of the war and which
culminated in the treaty of Limerick. The relation between
the land question and the conduct of the war is the
sub-ject of further discussion in the following chapter.
The second section covers the period up to 1699, when
the English parliament appointed a commission to inouire
into the administration of the Irish forfeitures. ’lhe
commissioners reviewed the entire proceedings of the
crown in relation to the forfeitures from 1690 onwards.
Different sections of their report dealt with outlav2ies,
adjudications under the articles, pardons and royal
grants. 1~ost of these proceedings overlapped. Estates
were forfeited and grantea away; subsequently the owners
were admitted to articles or contrived to securer pardons.
back, or of which they failed to obtain possession.
catholics originally spared were subsequently informed
against and put on trial. Ghronological treatment is
impracticable, and the scheme adopted by the inquiry
commissioners has been followed. Different sections of
the inquiry report are dealt with in turn in chapters
~II-~I. The report gives a very summary account o~ the
processes of outlawry and of admission to the articles.
It throws little light on the nature and chronology of
the proceedings, or on the various ways in which
in-dividuals were affected by them. Some attempt has been
made to fill in the picture from the scattered evidence
available.
The concluding chapters cover the third and final
section, the period from the Resumption Act of 1700 to
the completion of the trustees’ sales in 1703. The
Eng-lish parliament, strongly objecting to the large grants
which William had made to ~entinck, Aeppel and other
favourites, resumed all but a small fraction of the ordered
Irish forfeitures andhthem to be vested in trustees. ~ihe
trustees’ administration involved the hearing of numerous
claims preferred by interested parties, both catholic
The war and the land, 1689-91
%’o James and William the Irish land question was a
subsidiary matter; to their Irish supporters it was of
major importance. From the beginning of the conflict it
was recognised by both sides that the ownership of the
land of ireland was at stake. A virtual monopoly of the
land would be the reward of complete victory for either
side. In a negotiated peace religious liberty and the
land would be the subjects of the hardest bargaining.
The repeal of the ~cts of ~ettl~ment and ~xplanation
had been pressed upon the reluctant James ever since his
accession. The flight of the protestants and their
ad-herence to William made an immediate issue of the
quest-ion. Louis (or his secretariat) had a much clearer idea
than James of the importance which the problem had for
Irish catholics. The first letter which he sent to d’Avaux
in Ireland gave a simplified version of the Restoration
settlement and urged that James should be persuaded,
firstly, to return to catholics the regicides’ estates
which had been ~ranted to him, and~ secondly, to forfeit
the property of disloyal protestants and grant it to
cath-olics. Louis recognised that it might not suit James to
i protestant feeling both in England and in Ireland¯
D’Avaux gives a detailed account of the negotiations
which led up to the Repea~ and Attainder Acts of 1689.
His letters show the steady opposition maintained by
James to measures which were certain to arouse hostility
in England¯ The most was made of loyal protestants and 2 of catholics who had purchased from protestant grantees¯
According to d’Avaux James threatened to dissolve
parl-iament if certain catholics were not left in possession
of their purchases, and several members countered with
the threat that if they did not get satisfaction they 3
would not follow James to the war.
The acts as finally passed provided the basis for
little short of a complete catholic reconquest of Ireland.
Heirs of 1641 proprietors were to recover their ancestors’
estates in full, and bona fide purchasers were to be
re-prised by the forfeiture of property held by persons
who had joined or abetted the rebels¯ James himself was
to be reprised with the esta~ss held in 1641 by Lord
Kingston¯
The Act of Repeal provided for the appointment of
commissioners of claims, and this seems to have given
James the last word. Almost immediately a proclamation
was issued that there would be no court of claims for
Y
the present, ’lest some should neglect the public safe-4 ty upon pretence of attending their private concerns’.
It is doubtful whether a regular court of claims was
ever established. ~ing has an appendix which professes
to contain copies of orders for the restoration of
est-ates. ~ut only one instance is given, that of
~ally-shannon, county ~ildare. An order was passed by the
governor of the county in ~vlay 1690, at the close of the
dacobite regime, to the effect that Luke Fitzgerald
had proved before him that his ancestor~ were possessed
in 1641 of the mansion house of ~allyshannon. The new
holder, 2rancis Annesley, was therefore directed to hand 5
over possession of the house.
It is evident that there were also numerous instances
of informal seizure of the property of those protestants
who had fled. In July 1689 the revenue commissioners
issued orders for action to be taken against persons who
had seized land on the pretext that the owner was absent
in rebellion. Such lands were to be taken over by the 6 lord lieutenant of the county pending further orders.
The revenue commissioners seem to have leased out some
estates forfeited by the Act of Attainder, but the practice
was later stopped on the ground that ’several officers
on pretence of taking lands forfeited by the late Act of
Attainder do follow the commissioners of revenue now in
4. Proclamation of 30 July 1689 (H.M.C., 0rmonde NLSS, ¯ King, State of the rotestants,~app. 24,
6. Nugent~~.L.I., ~ 3302J
their circuit and thereby neglect to attend their corn-7
mands’. 0rmond’s correspondence refers to complaints
that some of his tenants were compelled to pay rent
to former proprietors on the strength of the Jacobite 8
legislation.
The evidence indicates that James and his
govern-ment were by no means anxious to implegovern-ment the Acts of
Repeal and Attainder and tried as far as possible to
restrain the natural eagerness of their dispossessed
supporters. Little progress had been made for the formal
transfer of land to the 1641 proprietors when the
Jacob-ite defeat at the ~oyne put any territorial reconquest
out of the question. After that the catholics’ only
hope was to save as much as possible of their existing
estates and liberties.
On the Williamite side also the importance of the
land question was rec~gnlsed from the first, very
di-verse views were held on the subject, and the influence
of different pressure groups can be traced in the
develop-ment of the political side of William’s campaign right
up to the conclusion of the treaty of Limerick. The same
diversity of views is traceable through the maze of
for-feitures, pardons, grants and resumptions which
con-stitutes the history of the Williamite forfeitures.
7. Proclamation of 25 Apr. 1690
8. 0rmond to Valentine ~myth, 0rmonde N~SS, clvi. 4~ ).
2
(H .M. C. ; 0rmonde ~kSS, ii. 436).
The political side of William’s war was a
com-promise. A policy of unconditional surrender would, if
successful, yield a handsome dividend in the form of
coz~fiscations with which to pay for the campaign and
reward
it was
his Irish war as soon as possible and switch his forces
to the continent. That object might be frustrated if
the Irish were driven by desperation to prolong the deserving friends and helpers. On the other hand
of over-riding importance to William to finish
lish parliament, which wished
possible of the heavy cost of
of forfeited estates.
The partisans
to defray as much as
the war from the proceeds
of varying points of view carried on olics would
guard for the English interest lay in depriving
Irish of their remaining lands.
The political side of the war has received less
at-tention than the military. It is significant as marking
out the divergent lines of force which determined the
form of the treaty of Limerick and the way in which it
was implemented. The military need for ending the war
quickly on almost any terms was met by opposing thrusts
from the Anglo@Irish, anxious to add as many acres as
possible to the protestant interest, and from the Eng-struggle. At the same time William had no lack of
Irish protestants to advise him that clemency
tocath-be a great mistake, and that the only
a lively warfare by memorandum and pamphlet from the
beginning of 1689. The ’Documents on the reduction of
Ireland’ in the Royal Irish Academy contain a paper
endorsed ’Difficulty of reducing Ireland, given to the
prince, 1689’. This took the view that, as the English
had seven million Irish acres and the Irish had only
two million, it was not worth spinning out a war for
the sake of confiscating the two million at the risk of
ruining the seven million. The writer expressed himself
in favour of a declaration guaranteeing their estates
and religion to Irish freeholders. He recommended that
the general sent over to reduce the country should be
accompanied by commissioners empowered to treat with 9
the Irish or any section of them.
On 9 January 1689 the lords and gentlemen of Ireland
presented William with a paper recommending that he should
summon the catholics to surrender on a promise that they
should enjoy their existing estates and ’be connived at
in the private exercise of their religion by secular
priests only’. Those who did not surrender within a
time-limlt should be proceeded against with the utmost
severity. William was asked to lose no time in sending i0
over sufficient force to reduce the obstinate.
On February 22 William issued a declaration which was
generally in line with these proposals. It called on the
Irish catholics to surrender on the promise that they
should keep their estates and continue to enjoy all the
favour of the private exercise of their religion that
the law allowed; an early session of the Irish parliament
was ~so promised in which further indulgence to catholics
would be proposed. The declaration added that the estates
of those who did not submit by April i0 would be forfeited
and distributed to those who assisted William in reducing ii
Ireland to its due obedience. This declaration had
practic-ally no effect and it became clear that Ireland could not
be reduced without the use of force.
The idea, evidently suggested by the precedent of 1642,
that the land could be made to pay for the reduction of
Ireland was early put fo~vard by Richard Cox, later lord
chancellor. ~le is said to have presented each member of
the convention parliament with a copy of his ’Aphorisms
relating to the kingdom of Ireland’, in which he made
the point that the estates of the Irish were sufficient 12 to defray the expense of reducing them to their duty.
He estimated that such estates amounted to a fourth of
the country and were worth £3,000,000. The suggestion
found favour with the English parliament and clauses
applying the forfeitures to the cost of the war formed
ii. n.Y.C, rep. 12, app. vi. 164-5.
part of various abortive attainder bills.
In the summer of 1689 the ’English nobility and
gentry of Ireland’ apparently suspected that ~illiam’s
terms were going to be too easy, and submitted a
mani-festo urging that the leading rebels should be excepted
from pardon, on the ground that ireland would always
be rebellious as long as considerable properties
remain-ed in the hands of the Irish. This manifesto was
answer-ed by a pamphlet which made the accurate forecast that
if the leaders were excepted from pardon they would
pre-vent their followers from submitting, with the result
that William’s forces would have to remain in the field 13
all winter. This pamphlet was followed by another,
which argued that some sort of declaration was necessary
not to make the ’whole Irish nation’ desperate, but that
the chief and most notorious rebels should be excepted
and their estates applied to the relief of protestants.
fhe writer suggested that a distinction should be drawn
between the Irish leaders, clancarty and ~ntrim should
on no account be pardoned. The pardoning of influential
but less intransigent opponents, such as ~rittas,
Clan-rioarde and 1~ettervill, might be useful and cause internal 14
jealousy. Oox at one stage suggested that a distinction
might be drawn between the Irish and the old English,
i
13. Reasons for his majesty’s issuing a ~eneral pardon to the rebels of Ireland.m
which would have the advantage of making it clear to
15 the world that the quarrel was national and not religious.
It is ax nice question how far the passing of the
Jacobite Acts of Repeal and Attainder influenced
William-policy. Forfeiting the estates of unsuccessful ’rebels’
was in any case part of the routine of Irish history;
in particular the parallel between 1641 and 1688 was in
everyone’s mind. ~en if no Jacobite parliament had
met, it seems certain that there would have been just
as keen a demand for Irish forfeitures. Strengthening
the protestant interest and financing an expensive war
by the confiscation of opponents’ lands were primary
objectives for Williamites as they had been for
parl-iamentarlans; the desire for retaliation was a
second-ary consideration. In any case, the acts were only the
last of a series of transactions, all of which
pro-testants considered to merit retribution.
King’s State of the protestants makes a great deal
of both acts and has, via ~acaulay, given the impression
that they loomed very large in the scheme of things.
From other sources it appears that the acts were taken
calmly enough. The ’breaking of the settlement’ had long
been apprehended and cannot have come as much of a shock.
There are several allusions to both acts in the pamphlets
of the time, but there is little mention of them in the
State Papers or other official records. The numerous
Irish witnesses who appeared before the English house
of lords from June to August 1689 to give evidence on
the policy to be adopted for reducing Ireland and on
the English attainder bill are not recorded as ment-16
ioning either act.
Some use was made of the acts to strengthen the
arguments of the more thorough-going section of
Will-Jam’s supporters. Thus, while the repeal bill was still
being debated in Dublin, a speaker urged the English
commons to follow James’s example and raise supplies 17
by the seizure of Irish estates. James’s example was,
however, only cited as a reinforcement of proposals
that had been brought before the English commons some
time before the Dublin parliament was convened. A
Dublin news-letter, reporting with comparative coolness
the passing of the Act of Repeal, remarked that its
thirty provisions would very soon serve as a good pre-18
cedent for the English. A note of 1690 contains a
suggestion of Dr Gorges, formerly ~enry Cromwell’s
secretary and then Schomberg’s, to turn the Irish Act
of Attainder on themselves; each provision was to be 19
used ’vice versa’ against the Irish.
But references of this sort are not very conspicuous,
16. H.M.C. rep. 12, app. vi. 137-44 and 229-35.
17. ~rey, Debates of the house of commons, ix. 348. 18. R.I.A., MS 24. G. 2, p. ii.
and the legislation of the Dublin parliament seems to
have counted for little in comparison with the much
greater issues involved in the war as a whole. The
two acts must have contributed to the general
stiffen-ing of the protestant attitude against any settlement
with the catholics; they do not, however, seem to have
been taken into special consideration in the framing
of William’s policy.
Just before William left for Ireland one of Rawdon’s
correspondents wrote that the privy council were very
busy about drawing up a declaration to be sent along
with the king, and that there was no doubt that the
Irish would come in on terms. He could only hope that 20
the terms would not be too kind. The question of terms
is repeatedly referred to in the papers and correspondence
of Southwell, who accompanied William as principal
secretary of state for Ireland. On the first page of
the memorandum which Southwell drew up immediately
after his appointment is the note: ’About a declaration
of pardon and how far to extend or contract it’. In the
margin is the further note: ’To prepare some heads
21 herein as being a matter of great weight and consequence’.
After William’s victory at the Boyne Southwell took the
view that the Irish cause was hopelessly lost: ’--- we
are told that, as the bulk of the nation were already
20. D. Golbourne to Sir A. Rawdon, 31 May 1690 (Rawdon
sick of the war and their brass imaginary coin made
only valuable by the magic of their priests, so now
the body of the people are fled wherever their fears or
inclination send them, and that it is possible King
James may fling up all to some of their nobility, who
may retire to a few places of strength and there
cap-itulate in the best manner they can. In the present
prospect they seem to be a miserable people for having
rejected his majesty’s gracious proposal of 22 Febr~uary
1689. His progress since he landed has been so quick
that he hath issued no declaration nor overtures, and if
he conquers the rest as this which is past they are all
at mercy. Doubtless there will be sufficient to pay all
arrears of the army and the present charge of the
ex-pedition, and England will not have cause to repent of 22
the care and expense they were at’.
William directed Southwell to consult the committee
of protestants who had taken provisional charge of
Dub-lin. The question put to them was ’What is fit to be done
for drawing in and protecting the Irish now in arms against
their sacred majesties, King William and Queen Mary?’ The
committee’s report maintained a significant silence about
the Jacobite nobility and gentry but recommended that a
free pardon should be given to those members of the lower
orders who surrendered and gave up their arms; such pardon
was to extend even to those who had committed murder or
arson, as any exceptions would be a deterrent to sub-23
mission. On the basis of this report Southwell’s
staff drew up a declaration, the scheme of which was
’to invite in all of the meaner sort, as farmers or
those who have some
cattle, but not to
personal estate in house, goods or
(be) meddling with the landed men
until it appears into what posture they throw themselves
and into what corners they retire’. Southwell expected
that this would bring in ’the body of men which make
the bulk of the nation and that the rest will after-24
wards look the more abject’.
This was the well-known declaration of ~inglas, in
which a sharp distinction was drawn between the ~acobite
leaders and their followers. The declaration offered
protection to common soldiers who submitted and
surrend-ered their arms; protestion, which afforded security
from arbitrary molestation but no guarantee of estates,
was likewise offered to non-combatant gentry in the
williamite quarters who submitted. But as for the
,desperate leaders’, as William was now in a position
to make them sensible of their errors they were to be
left to the event of war, unless by great and manifest
demonstrations they convinced him that they were
deserv-ing of his mercy, which could never be refused to the
23. T.C.D., ~S I. 6. Ii, p. 57.
25
truly penitent. 1~e declaration resulted in a limited
number of submissions on the part of the elderly and
unwarlike, but , in the words of a subsequent
proclam-ation, it did not produce ’those effects of gratitude
and obedience from several of our rebellious subjects 26
which we justly expected’.
Oontemporary accounts, both Williamite and
Jacob-ite, are agreed that the uncompromising character of
the terms offered served to stiffen the irish at a time
when thei~ defeat at the Boyne and James’s flight must
have made their position appear desperate. Story, the
Williamite chaplain, observed that many of the Irish
officers complained that the declaration was too narrow
and that their exclusion from its terms obliged them
to stick to~gether as their only means of
self-preserv-ation. Story, while doubting whether the offer of terms
would have prevailed over Irish obstinacy, ventured the
opinion that Vvilliam himself would have preferred a
more generous declaration but was obliged to consider 27
the views of the English interest in Ireland.
~ishop burnet’s comments ran on much the same lines:
’It was hoped that the fullness of the pardon of the
commons might have separated them from the gentry, and
that by this means they would be so forsaken that they
25. London Gazette, 3-10 3uly 1690.
26. Proclamation of 25 3uly 1690 (~ullenaux, 3ournal of the three months royal campaign, p. 17).
would accept of such terms as should be offered them.
The king had intended to make the pardon more
compre-hensive, hoping to bring the war soon to an end, but
the English in Ireland opposed this. They thought the
present opportunity was not to be let go of breaking
the great Irish families, upon whom the inferior sort
would always ~depend. And in compliance with them the
indemnity now offered was so limited that it had no
effect; for the priests, who governed the Irish with a
very blind and absolute authority, prevailed with them to 28
try their fortunes still’.
The Jacobite author of’A light to the blind’ came
to a similar conclusion:
’But the estated gentlemen the prince excluded from his
mercy. This was a foolish edict, and the first of this
kind, i believe, that ever had been. 2or commonly a
prince entering into a country in order to conquer I it
doth in the first place encourage the principal persons
to submit unto him. And when these are gained the rest
do follow in course. I suppose the prince of Orange was
persuaded to go against reason in favour of his great
officers, who would have the Xrish catholic lords of
land to be rejected from all expectation of recovering
their estates, because the said officers were sure in
their own conceits that the irish army would be overcome
at last,
29 by the prince’s grant’.
and because then they might have those lands
The explanation for the uncompromising policy of
2inglas is no doubt that William’s appreciation of
the situation after the ~oyne was very much the same
as James’spthat all was over for the Jacobites. It is
very doubtful whether William was personally in favour
of a more liberal policy at that stage. There is a
story that the declaration of Finglas was drafted by
Richard Cox, who was a member of Southwell’s staff,
and that William accepted the draft in its entirety
with the remark that IVir Cox had exactly hit his own 30
mind.
The unexpected resistance of Limerick made William
change his tactics, and a marked change of policy
ap-pears from the autumn of 1690. The new policy
con-sisted in an attempt to divide the Irish leaders,
driving a wedge between the influential minority who
held estates under the Act of Settlement and the
maj-ority who had failed to recover their lands at the
Restoration. A vested interest in the Restoration
settlement, the maintenance of which depended on a
Willlamite victory, had been acquired both by those
who had wholly or partly recovered their ancestral
estates, and also by the ’new interest’ - such
29. h.~.C, rep. i0, app. v. 137.
catholics as Denis Daly who had bought land which had
been granted to protestants. ~harles O’Kelly, the
author of ’the destruction of ~yprus’, was highly
crit-ical of the latter class: ’These were men of new
inter-est, so called because they had purchased from usurpers
own
the inheritance of theirAcountrymen’, he observed that
’as these lands were restored to the old proprietors ing
by the repeal of the settlement the covet~ purchasers,
preferring their private gains to the general interest
of religion and country, were for submitting to a
gov-ernment which they very well knew would never allow 31
that decree’.
An important part in the handling of the new policy
was played by bentinck, William’s chief Dutch adviser.
~entinck’s letters contain numerous references to the
negotiations and to Grady, the intermediary. Grady was
John Grady of ’Cobray’, county Clare. ne is referred
to as oounsellor Grady and seems to have been a barrister
of the Inner Temple. ne first comes into the picture at
the end of July 1690, shortly before William began his
siege of Limerick. he seems to have been sent out of
Limerick by the Irish peace party to see what terms
could be obtained from William for the landed Jacobites.
ne presented himself at William’s camp at Goldenbridge
and then seems to have been sent to England, where he
was interviewed by bentinck who decided that his
services could be used for further negotiations with 32
the Irish.
In October 1690 Bentinck w~ote to Ginkel, the
com-mander of William’s forces in Ireland, that he had
sent ~rady over to Ireland and that it would be
ad-vantageous to press forward the negotiations as much 33
as possible. In i~ovember he wrote again, asking what
had become of ~rady and suggesting the use of other 34 intermediaries as the matter could not be neglected.
In December he hoped that Grady would be believed and
would succeed; he told ~inkel that he might allow Grady 35
to make his terms more favourable. In the same month
~entinck wrote again, asking impatiently for the
re-sult of Grady’s mission and pointing out that if the
Irish were to be brought to terms it was important not
to make them desperate; ~inkel could well promise them
more favourable and more general condltions. What
Ben-tlnck feared was that William’s army might be locked
up in Ireland for the next campaigning season, which
would be ’disastrous considering the state of affairs
32. ularke corr., i. 78. Grady’s departure from Lim-erick is also referred to in a letter from the ~iarauis d’Albeville to Tyrconnell, 27 Oct. 1690 (h.~i.C., Finch ~SS, ii. 478). Cobray may be a corruption of Capparoe, where ~radys held land.
33. Gorrespondentle, p. 188. 34. Ibid., p. 191.
36
in the ~etherlands’. A few days later he wrote that
Will&am was so persuaded of the need to use his arms
elsewhere that if things could be finished in Ireland
he would probably agree to give a general pardon, with
the exception of certain individuals; as ~rady had
brought proposals from the other side which amounted
to more or less the same thing, Ginkel was asked to
send him back to the enemy with authority to treat on 37
these lines. ~y January 1691 ~entinck had further
re-laxed the terms and wrote that it would be better to
do without all the confiscations than to be deprived
of the troops for the next season’s campaigning on the 38
continent. Early in December William himself had
writ-ten to Ginkel urging that the pace of the war should
be stepped up in Sligo and Kerry as, if the rebels were
not pressed, it was very doubtful whether they would
submit to such terms as he was at that stage willing 39
t~grant them. Ginkel answered that the rebels would
be reduced all the sooner if William were ready to make
some concessions; he evidently thought that William 40
was still trying to drive too hard a bargain.
The state of the negotiations at the end of 1690
is described in a memorandum given to d’Avaux by a
36. Correspondentie, ~7. Ibid., p. 199.
38. Ibid., pp. 201-2. 39. Ibid., p. 192. 40. Ibid., p. 194.
follower of ~aldearg 0’Donnell. The object of the
memor-andum was to inquire whether French help would be
forth-coming to enable 0’Donnell~ to carry on in the event
of Ginkel’s terms being accepted by the old English.
The terms were said to include an undertaking that all
who held estates in 1684 should be restored, with the
exception of Lords Clancarty and Antrim. This version
tallies with ~entinck’s reference to the exception of
certain individuals from the general pardon. The
agree-ment was to be guaranteed by the pope, the emperor and
the king of Spain. The memorandum stated that these
terms were attractive to the old English but stoutly
opposed by the old Irish, who had regained little by
the Restoration settlement and still hoped to recover 41
what they had had in 1641 or even earlier.
0’Kelly’s references to the negotiations give the
impression that there was a considerable body of
opin-ion in favour of making terms. One reason which he
gave for the Irish determination to resist was their
lack of trust in the English, ’who infringed so often 42
the public faith’. From the Williamlte side Story
corroborates this, saying that, although William
him-self was punctual in his observance of the declaration
of Finglas, some of his officers were apt to neglect
the king’s honour when it stood in conflict with their
/
41. ~egoc. d’Avaux en Irl., pp. 738-9.
